Sunday October 12, 2025
RidewithGPS gave us a nice route to Mukaishima. After we left the hotel and Highway 2 we followed some smaller roads through quiet villages. It is definitely harvest time for the rice, and families were working together to get the rice cut and dried.


There appears to be a lot of new builds and subdivisions. This means that some of the smaller rice fields are being removed from production and new houses are being built. I stopped to take a photo of this old traditional house, opposite a newer house construction.


We are now on the Shimanami Kaido. This is a “must do” bike route in Japan. The Shimanami Kaido is a 70 km stretch of road for cyclists that connects Onomichi to Imabari and crosses six bridges, connecting six islands in Ehime Prefecture. Most cyclists complete the ride in one day.
We were not sure how long it would take us to get to Mukaishima and decided to spend a night here before completing the rest of the Shimanami Kaido. We were three hours early for check-in at the Lighthouse Hotel. Ralf asked if we could leave our bags so that we could cycle into town (about 3kms). No problem.


This old mini-cooper was in the parking lot.
After crossing the first bridge on the Shiminami Kaido, we walked back onto the bridge so that we could take photos.



This was on the vending machine in the rest area.

We had a second lunch and a good cup of coffee at the Foccia Puffer. Then we found a bike shop, which had rental bikes and also sold bikes (Panasonic Bikes), for local residents. The lady we spoke to spoke very good English. She had recently been in Canada, taking her family to show them where she used to live in Toronto.


We noticed a lot of cyclists congregating in this area. There was a ferry crossing to Imabari. I think a lot of cyclists skip the first bridge, and take the ferry to Mukaishima.
We came back to the hotel and checked in at 2:30. We had bought some noodles from the Family Mart for dinner as we are about 3.5km from the downtown. We paid extra for breakfast, which should give us a good start for a long day of cycling with “hills”. The hills are the ramps up to the bridges.

